Best Blogging Practices might sound like an oxymoron when blogging itself is loosely defined. Blogging itself is defined in many ways by many people and I am going to try to give away some of the tips which I find will help corporate blogs reach out to their audience better.

Personalize your communication – Blogs are commonly referred to as an informally written journal and taking that definition into your company blog is very important to your readers. They need to know who they are reading about and the posts need to connect to the user on an informal level. Personalize and humanize your blog instead of making it a press room.

Join Conversations – Listening is perhaps one of the most important activities in Social Media if you ask me. There are discussions on your service, your product somewhere out there in the wild web. Find them, join in the conversation on your blog linking to the sources and when you start a new conversation, people will listen to you.

Be Consistent – One of the major reasons we advocate a firm to think twice before starting their own company blog is updating it! Most companies starting their own blog lose steam in a few weeks and they end up becoming an eerie dead pool. Underestimating the energy, time and commitment to maintain a blog is a major mistake by most companies.

Provide Value – Are you a gardening supplies company? Tell your readers about the best ways to grow a garden. Are you a web designing firm? Tell your readers about the latest trends in web designing.

Comments – Treat comments as posts. The comments in any blog are an important part where you get feedback, bricks and roses and be ready to acknowledge the good the bad and the ugly. Give your readers the feeling that they are being listened to and their suggestions appreciated. This will increase your blogs credibility and authority.

If you have a corporate blog, I would be really interested in hearing from your experiences of maintaining one. Do share your views on the comments!

This entry was submitted by a guest author. If you wish to contribute, please contact me for my terms.

Divi WordPress Theme - My Review

Divi is a WordPress theme that web designers do not want you to know. It comes with a drag-and-drop theme builder. You can build beautiful looking unique websites without touching a line of code. Just choose from one of the many pre-made layouts, or pick elements and arrange them any way you like.

Divi is every WordPress developer's wet dream. Surprise your clients with neat responsive websites and have fun building them.

Divi comes from Elegant Themes. If you enjoy building websites, you *need* an Elegant Themes membership. 87 beautiful themes and 5 plugins for the cost of less than a candy-bar each!

11 Comments.

Thanks for the post. I personally can attest to the amount of work needed to sustain a company blog. You have to think of a good topic to write about, an engaging title, keywords–and then you actually have to write it.

I agree, maintaining a blog is a lot work. I have a small company and maintaining the blog takes a lot of time but it is well worth it. I would have to say 75% of my clients find my blog first thru organic searches. It does take time trying to think of something of value to write but by using Google Analytics and key word tracking I can see what my audience is searching for and that helps me determine what my next topic should be.

Having a Q&A post that encourages readers to post a question has also helped me personalize it a bit more as well establish a rapport with my readers.

Thanks for sharing and confirming that it isn’t as easy as some would like it to seem.

Thanks for the great article here. I was searching for something like that for quite a long time and at last I have found it here. I hope to see more such nice articles in the nearest future too. Thanks!
Regards, Eshant

I think a lot of companies look past the fact that blogging with fresh content is the most important piece to better leads, better rankings, well pretty much better everything online. They also tend to keep readers located on just their blog instead of spreading their messages and value throughout their entire site. So value content is always before their pitch.